WORKPLACE CYBERBULLYING IN SINGAPORE: PREVALENCE, FACTORIAL STRUCTURE AND MODERATORS

Abstract

Workplace cyberbullying has severe costs for targets and organisations, hence, it is crucial to understand its prevalence and nature. This thesis examined the relationships between workplace cyberbullying and job satisfaction, quit intention, work engagement and psychological well-being and determined if coping, gender or rank act as moderators in the above relationships. Two studies based on surveys with working adults were conducted. Study 1 had 627 randomly sampled respondents and Study 2 had 89 respondents recruited from the researcher's personal network. The prevalence rates of workplace cyberbullying were 35% and 15% respectively. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the Cyber Negative Acts Questionnaire had a unifactorial structure. Regression showed that cyberbullying was positively related to quit intention and negatively related to job satisfaction and psychological well-being. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed moderation effects: (1) women who experienced cyberbullying reported greater job dissatisfaction and quit intention, (2) cybervictims who used either problem-focused and emotion-focused coping reported no losses in psychological well-being and (3) older cybervictims reported more intention to quit than younger workers. Implications of the study are discussed.